A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

And a funding application a wish every part of you makes.

It’s tricky to know what to write when I’ve been sat at my laptop doing nothing but filling in applications and entering prizes since just before new year. Days spent answering questions about my work, putting together budgets, and finding the words to express ideas for art not yet begun hardly makes for good reading. I think that might be why this essential and time-consuming part of being an artist is barely covered by most art degrees. Who wants to teach or sit in a seminar about how to search for funding and what to do when you find some you really want?

I would much rather tell you stories from my van build, but I don’t have any. What I do have are four completed applications, two more underway, and a list of others with deadlines throughout February. I have dog walks and Mums new record player and cats who keep climbing onto my lap and walking on my keyboard. I have Peaky Blinders and The West Wing for once my mind gives up. And I have the sharp slice of the crescent moon and the pinpricks of stars, which have been visible this week for what feels like the first time in January.

Cuddling Willow and Walking Gem

The clouds and rain have passed allowing the grass to sparkle with frost, the pale winter sun to shine, and the skies to be filled with blue. As I took Gem Dog up the hill for her last stretch before bed it was a relief to look up and see even a scattering of stars in the dark above me. They make the world so much larger, make me feel more able to stand up straight, to breath, to throw my should back. I stood for a while looking up at them, trying to pick out the few constellations I recognise.

As I drifted to sleep, I imagined the stars above the roof of the house, an endless expanse with space to dream. That is what these applications I keep writing are, they are dreams. Or, to slightly misquote Disney, wishes my heart makes. I write them and then I send them off into the hands of judging panels and funding boards, trying not to also send off the piece of heart I put into every one of them. That way my wishes and dreams don’t bruise as much while waiting for responses, or hurt as badly if the answers come back no. Every subscriber to this letter of mine, free and paid, are part of the fortifications that make me strong enough to complete and submit these applications. You lessen the bruises.

I won’t have any answers for a while, but I wished upon the stars this week. I am hoping it will give my dreams, my carefully curated image lists and 200-word answers to impossibly complex questions, the chance to grow and stretch and reach out into something beautiful. As I spend my days writing these things the stars have reminded me how essential it is to look up, to see the sky, the waves, the birds and bats.

For anyone who read last week’s letter and was interested, here is an article on the incredible protest on Dartmoor.

Next week’s letter will be a few days late as I am heading to London to celebrate the launch of my incredible sister’s novel, A Wild and True Relation. Expect gushing and delight when I have time to sit at my laptop. Until then I say to you all, when you are outside this week, don’t forget to look up and breath.